While there is much focus on university-level study abroad, the high school study-abroad context offers a rich and fundamentally different environment for language learning (Tan & Kinginger, 2013). However, there has been a paucity of research conducted within the context of high-school study-abroad programs that explores the effect of study-abroad programs on language proficiency development (Tobin et al., 2018, Hessel, 2017).

To address these gaps, the purpose of the study is to investigate a) the impact of high-school study-abroad programs on student language proficiency gains as measured by a standardized language proficiency test--the Avant STAMP 4s, b) how proficiency gains varied with program types and students’ demographic background, and c) the extent to which students’ self-assessment and host-family assessment results can predict their standardized language proficiency test scores.